Letters

Half measures

It is a great mistake to advocate the policy of a federal republic of Scotland, Wales and England. This policy is at best a sop to Scottish nationalism, and an attempt at appeasement to undermine the growing electoral strength of the SNP.

Like all half-measures it ignores the political realities in modern Scotland, and it will not work.

Until moving to Scotland, I - like most English comrades - saw the SNP as extremists, and completely underestimated the intensity of anti-English feeling here.

The SNP are in fact moderates in Scottish terms, and will not in any case be undermined by the British left’s advocacy of a federal republic. However, there is a separatist republican tendency in Scotland, composed of nationalist extremists, the very existence of which the British left ignores at its peril, and this tendency is also growing.

I am not referring to the silly and harmless ‘republicanism’ of groups like Liberation, or the eccentric ‘Scottish Republican Socialist Party’. These groups only operate as pressure groups within the SNP, and can safely be ignored.

I am referring to the separatist republicanism of anti-British and anti-English groups like the Scottish National Liberation Army, and Scottish Separatist Group.

These groups advocate republican separatism, and the British left’s advocacy of republicanism can only strengthen the growing support for these extremists.

The British left should abandon notions about a “federal republic” and defend the unity of the working class.

James Hancock
Edinburgh

Men behaving badly

The SLP left must not overreact in relation to Tony Goss. Because there is a witch hunt against the CPGB, this is no reason to start up a counter-witch hunt against Tony Goss. We must stop puffing up the ‘wicked Goss’ alongside pumping up the ‘evil CPGB’.

I’ve known Tony Goss for many years. I know that in the early 1980s he had a reputation amongst Labour Party activists for aggressive behaviour. But there is no evidence, as far as I know, of him being “corrupt”. Since he joined the SLP he has not committed a physical assault on anybody. The two incidents involving comrade Goss - the South London branch meeting and recently outside Conway Hall - were incidents in which he was threatening. But there is a difference between threatening to do something and actually doing it.

This is not to say that threatening behaviour is acceptable. It is not. No SLP member should threaten other SLP members or members of other socialist and working class organisations. It is a question of having a disciplined party based on the highest standards. Otherwise the party will be brought into disrepute. Comrades have to learn basic discipline. We need that discipline to be able to function as a democratic organisation.

Tony Goss seems to have a short fuse. Other organisations can now light the blue touch paper and retire to watch the firework display. Exciting fun it is, all at the expense of the SLP.

When Arthur Scargill was accused of corruption by the Daily Mirror, Maxwell and co, he fought to defend himself and clear his name. He didn’t go round threatening to punch them up. Had he done so, think what the headlines would have been in the capitalist media. With patience, discipline and struggle, the truth will out. Scargill’s innocence was vindicated.

I was not a witness to the Conway Hall incident. But I do think that Tony Goss should defend himself. Not with fists or threats. For this is surely the method of proving his opponents are right. Instead he should take up his right of reply in the Weekly Worker. If the Weekly Worker doesn’t publish it then that will expose the paper to the charge of hypocrisy and slander.

Of course there may be a decision by the SLP leadership not to write in the Weekly Worker on the grounds that it may give the paper credibility. In which case Tony Goss is without any means of defending himself. He is being sacrificed on the altar of the leadership’s struggle with the CPGB. Getting at the truth is more important than ‘clever’ tactics. So as far as I am concerned, SLP members should use the socialist press whenever they can.

I was a witness to the first incident of threatening behaviour in the South London branch involving Tony Goss. He eventually apologised to the branch for his behaviour. For me, once he had apologised that was the end of the matter.

My criticism of Tony was that he took far too long to apologise. The branch had to go through a long drawn out battle before the apology was reluctantly given. This involved two branch executive meetings, one of which had an intimidatory atmosphere, and a rather long ‘crisis’ branch meeting, followed by a vote demanding an apology.

Threatening behaviour in meetings is not acceptable. Yet Tony was reluctant to do the honourable thing at the earliest opportunity. Hecould have and should have saved us all a lot of time. But if it is necessary for a branch to fight to ensure proper democratic behaviour from its members, so be it.

I don’t blame Tony entirely for his reluctance to apologise. After all, he had some important allies. Helen Drummond, the branch secretary, decided that although she convened the meeting, it never really took place in a constitutional sense. The general secretary, Pat Sikorski, and Brian Heron, London organiser, turned up at the subsequent meetings. They wanted us to be reasonable and “compromise”. Their attitude was ‘Let’s pretend it never happened and forget about it’. Other comrades, like Brian McKeon, behaved in a similar way. Brian told me that he was going to go round to see Tony and tell him in no uncertain words that he had been “out of order”. But publicly at the meetings Brian voted against those who wanted an apology, and in favour of turning a blind eye to the incident.

Did any of these people tell comrade Goss to do the decent thing? I think not. Was it therefore surprising that Tony was reluctant to admit he had behaved badly. The message is that bad behaviour in the SLP is acceptable, provided of course that you have friends in high places.

Let us make sure that we base ourselves on a sober estimate of known and provable facts. There are no facts to show that Tony Goss is corrupt, nor that he has actually assaulted any member of the SLP or CPGB. Neither are there any facts or evidence to show that Barry Biddulph (Vauxhall SLP) or John Pearson (Stockport SLP) are guilty of any misconduct. I am convinced that they are not and they have become innocent victims of this ‘hunt the CPGB’ paranoia.

Unless SLP members, and I include Arthur Scargill in this, can base themselves on facts - not fears, phobias and fantasies - the party is doomed to self-destruction and political bankruptcy.

I won’t cover up misconduct by Tony Goss or anybody else. But I will defend Tony Goss, Barry Biddulph and John Pearson against false accusations and misrepresentations.

Steve Freeman
SLP South London (personal capacity)

Distorting reality

The back page of the latest Socialist News (March-April) carries an article, ‘Party wins votes in Tory heartland’ by Arthur Scargill, SLP general secretary. Scargill tries to present the SLP electoral results in the parliamentary by-election in Wirral South as a success. The SLP only achieved 156 votes out of 43,293. With a good turnout of 73%, the SLP only achieved 0.36% of the votes. In the whole of his article Scargill did not mention that this constituency has a significant working class base and that it gave 22,767 votes (52.6%) to Labour. Far from being a “Tory heartland”, only one third of Wirral South’s votes went to the Conservatives. The difference between Labour and the SLP was not two, five, 10 or 15 times more, like in previous by-elections, but around 150 times!

Instead of trying to distort reality by presenting an extremely bad result as a kind of victory, the SLP needs to learn the lessons. If the SLP were to repeat such a result in the 100 constituencies in which it wants to stand candidates, it would lose every deposit. More important than £50,000 being lost is the demoralisation that it could create in the membership. Scargill wrote: “The Wirral South by-election result was predictable.” If that is the case, why should we be happy with such extremely poor results? The party must recognise when it has made a mistake with the aim of correcting it for the next time.

Scargill should stop falsifying reality and drop his triumphalist and arrogant attitude. He thinks that the SLP, because of him, could cause a surprise. He constantly claims that the SLP is the “fourth national party”. In fact, it is smaller than four Northern Irish parties and the national parties in Scotland and Wales and even has less members than the SWP or the Socialist Party. Instead of trying to attract the left, Scargill is leading a purge of their leftwing activists.

What the SLP needs to do is radically change its electoral policies. It needs to open the party to the left and to try to stand candidates which reflect local united fronts of the left, trade unions and antiracist organisations.

Liza Roberts
Liaison Committee of Militants for a Revolutionary Communist International, Glasgow

Role of the soviets

It is non-dialectical to consider the course of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as all of a piece. The stages are definable. Also, why ignore the statement in the given name? These were soviet socialistic republics.

In setting up the first workers’ state, a basic principle was to end exploitation. So when Lenin and the Bolsheviks, allied with existing workers’ soviets, took power, it was written into the constitution that there would be no individual appropriation of the fruits of another’s labour. Through social production and social appropriation, the next stage as Marx laid down, the state becomes the sole employer. And since the state, even a socialist state, is by definition repressive, it is necessary to offset such potential power - hence the role of the soviets.

The Russian word ‘soviet’ means council, conference, opinion or advice. The soviets, the workers’ councils, were developed throughout, and acted as the arteries of the state. The flow of criticism, suggestions and practical knowledge was the lifeblood of the community - democratic centralism in its true form.

Though the system operated during the build-up of heavy machinery and rapid industrialisation, it broke up as a result of the Nazi invasion and consequent dire destruction, displacement and loss of life - when supreme control was invested in JV Stalin, on a par with Churchill and Roosevelt.

After his death, the 22nd Congress denigrated his name and the “cult of personality”. The term “workers” was dropped, substituted by “the people”. The state was no longer a class state, but “the state of the whole people”. The aim was to appease the United States, now brandishing atomic weaponry and aiming to halt the spread of communism. With the ending of the active soviet system, state rule became increasingly bureaucratic.

Mary Carter
North Devon